“I hope your landlady did not bother to wake you up? I could have waited. You are Miss Adele Leamington, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“Will you come in, please?” she asked, and took him into the stuffy little front parlour, and, closing the door behind her, waited.
“I am a reporter,” he said untruthfully, and her face fell.
“You’ve come about Uncle Francis? Is anything really wrong? They sent a detective to see me a week ago. Have they found him?”
“No, they haven’t found him,” he said carefully. “You knew him very well, of course, Miss Leamington?”
She shook her head.
“No, I have only seen him twice in my life. My dear father and he quarrelled before I was born, and I only saw him once after daddy died, and once before mother was taken with her fatal illness.”
She heard him sigh, and sensed his relief, though why he should be relieved that her uncle was almost a stranger to her, she could not fathom.
“You saw him at Chichester, though?” he said.